1939 The Gentleman's Companion volume II Beeing an Exotic Drinking Book

THE EXOTIC DRINKING BOOK

Indies, during our editorial days with Doubleday, Doran & Company magazines. T ake rYz jiggers dark rum, turn into a collins glass with large lumps of ice, squeeze Yz lime in and add the crushed lime itself; now comes r tsp sugar, and fill up with ginger ale of some decent sort, or better still with stone bottle ginger beer. It is a satisfying cooler. By using Yz dark rum and Yz Carta de Oro Bacardi the drink will suit feminine Jamaicaphobes. NOW, GENTLEMEN, at LONGLAST ARE EIGHT or so MINT JuLEP CEREMONIES-BEING V AR1ous ADAPTATIONS of this PEERLESS A:MERI– CAN CoNCEPTION from ALL PARTS of the WoRLD where IT Is PROPERLY REVERED . Right from the meaning of the word Juleps have been a spill-and– pelt of contradiction and disagreement. . . . The very name itself never was midwifed on any honeysuckle-bowered southern balcony, but comes from the Persian gulab, or Arab julab: meaningLrose water. . . . No sane Kentucky planter, in full possession of his faculties will yield an inch to any Marylander when it comes to admitting rye is superior to bourbon in a Julep, when actually, a Julep is international and has been international for years-just as the matters of radio and flying are international. It is a drink composed of whisky or brandy -and, of lat~rum; sweetened, iced, and flavoured with aromatic leaves of the mentha family. So before the shooting starts let's explain right here and now that there's no more chance of getting the various Julep schools to agree on fabrication of this most delectable of drinks, than we have of getting a proud Atlanta great-grandmother to concede General Sherman a nice, gentle, well-meaning, big boy. First of all there is the silver cup versus the glass school; the chilled glass versus room-temperature school; the slightly bruised mint versus the all-bruised school; the rye versus the bourbon school· the fruit ' garnish versus the plain school. Feuds have begun because someone breathed the possibility that city water would make a Julep as well as water dipped from a fern- , 6r .